DoCoMo is reported to have won the battle with Vodafone for a 30 percent stake in Bangladesh based GSM operator, Aktel for around US$425 million. Sources told the Reuters news agency that a formal announcement will be made next week.

 The stake is currently owned by AK Khan, a privately owned textiles-to-telecoms company - and had recently been valued at around US$300 million. While Vodafone has been looking for a route into the Bangladeshi market since late last year and was known to be trying to buy the AK Khan stake - DoCoMo only entered into discussions last month.

In January, Gavin Darby, the company's chief executive officer for Asia, Africa and China had a meeting with government officials and said in an interview with local media, "Vodafone is interested to invest here. We are excited by the growth possibilities in Bangladesh,"

A DoCoMo spokesman said nothing had been decided.

The country already has six operators - and according to figures from the Mobile World, ended last year with just under 34.4 million mobile subscribers - which is still a population penetration level of just 22.6%. Also worth noting is that while the country has six operators, only three of them are of any significant scale, Grameenphone (15m), Banglalink (6m) and Aktel (7m). While Warid Telecom lags with 2.1 million customers, it should be noted that it only started operations early last year. The two remaining long term incumbents, Citycell and Teletalk barely add up to 2 million customers between them.

Source: Reuters - Mobile World